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Celerra [EOL] vs Dell PowerScale comparison

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Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Celerra [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerScale
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
NAS (1st), File and Object Storage (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user5157 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr System Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Highly scalable and reliable SAN with fiber channel connectivity but bulky in size and consumes a lot of power
Hot spare disk system to take over the full workload in the event of a failure, at the same performance and service levels. The data is clustered over multiple disks so data read/write access time is very low. Fiber channel connectivity option for high speed data transfer. Single point of management/control. Customized version of Linux OS hence much higher security.
Santosh Bharadwaj Rangavajjula - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
File sharing has supported collaboration and disaster recovery but security support still needs work
Dell PowerScale can improve specifically for AI workloads, particularly on the MCPs. I would add that we have not seen an official MCP from Dell PowerScale and are relying on open source. It would be valuable to have an MCP server that we can set up directly with them. Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security could be better. We have Superna that we buy along with Dell PowerScale, but we are seeing very big problems with integrating it. Superna is primarily for the security use case, as we want to prevent cybersecurity attacks and ransomware attacks. If Dell is providing this as a supplementary feature, it should provide better support. Regarding Dell PowerScale's AI capabilities, I do not see much accuracy and reliability of output. This is actually a security problem because Dell does not provide official MCP servers while most other vendors are providing it. This forces us to rely on open source, which is not secure. Dell PowerScale plays a role in my organization's AI initiatives as we want to use the Metadata IQ functionality from Dell PowerScale; however, there is not enough support and extensive documentation for us to be able to do this.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"At last we bought this Celerra NS 40, with 17 TB of space which is giving superb performance."
"For five years, I have not lost any data, and I can access whatever data I fed in the first year as if it were fresh today, which is what makes it special."
"Dell PowerScale seamlessly integrates with our entire infrastructure."
"Its scalability has been huge for us."
"PowerScale has made it extremely easy to scale file data across our organization. We have two implementations of Isilon. One is a replica of the other. When scaling, we add nodes to each location and expand the cluster. The process is straightforward."
"Having SMB, NFS, and S3 support helps my team day-to-day as we mostly use NFS or SMB, but we also want to use S3, especially for reading files and reading objects."
"With Dell PowerScale, there is no concern about whether the system is running; Dell PowerScale operates in all circumstances, and we have experienced six years of zero seconds of downtime."
"Dell PowerScale's performance is good."
"Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is a platform that is very easy for teams to work with."
 

Cons

"Very bulky and heavy in weight."
"I see a disadvantage if I cannot integrate Dell PowerScale with the public cloud, as I have not used this feature before."
"Perhaps if there was a local chatbot built within the system or on the dashboard where we could directly ask for anything on the OneFS, it could help us."
"I am uncertain if Dell PowerScale meets the growing needs of my organization."
"The only thing that I think PowerScale could do better is improving the HTTP data access protocol. At the present, you cannot protect access to data via HTTP or HTTPS the same way that you can secure data access through other protocols like NFS or SMB[...]the Unified Permission Model that would allow a user to authenticate before being able to access a private file, does not apply."
"The product’s expansion capacity, pricing clarity, and ease of use need improvement."
"The initial setup for this solution is complex."
"If I could improve one thing on Dell PowerScale (Isilon), it would be better object storage as it recently breached into S3, and that capability could be broadened."
"The thing that they are working on now, and we are following closely is more native cloud integrations. The way that we envision workloads in the future is around moving compute to data instead of the other way around. So, we would like to have a single pane glass to manage storage across a variety of different platforms, including native cloud. That would be awesome."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The only drawback for us is that it's a large upfront investment. This was a huge decision for a startup company to make. It took a bit for us to get over the line on it, but we have not regretted it."
"Dell PowerScale is an expensive solution compared to other products like Qumulo."
"The general cost for a system like this is expensive. The total cost depends on your use case. You need to pay for every additional feature that you use."
"Pricing for this solution is reasonable."
"I always want things to be less expensive. However, I would say the pricing is fair. Their costs are in alignment with their competitors. It is a good value for the money."
"The pricing is excellent."
"The pricing is expensive, but I think it's a fair value because it does manage itself. It definitely is much simpler than any of the other scale-out storage platforms that we've looked at in the past."
"The price of Dell PowerScale (Isilon) is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
I think the price is reasonable. We procured this during the time of COVID, around 2022, and the price was very competitive. If you are looking for technology, there will also be a price associated...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
The disadvantage that I felt is not hardware-related. I feel that Dell needs to focus on the service aspects. Once they sell this hardware to customers, customers also expect service from them. Del...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerScale (Isilon)?
Dell PowerScale is used for keeping our company data. Continental is an automotive company, and we keep recording files on a petabyte basis. We have globally around more than 200 petabytes of Dell ...
 

Also Known As

Celerra
PowerScale, Dell EMC Isilon
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wentworth-Douglas Hospital, Kindred Healthcare, Cosentry, Sumitomo Life Insurance Company, Shriners, BZWBK
OMRF, University of Utah, Translational Genetics Research Institute, Arcis, Geofizyka Torumn, Cyprus E&P Corporation, Colburn School, Columbia Sportswear, Harvard Medical School, University of Michigan, National Library of France,
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, CTERA and others in NAS. Updated: October 2026.
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